The Girl in the Pink Cardigan
by Haeronwen
Summary: This is not a girl looking to have all eyes on her. This is not a girl looking to have any eyes on her. And Dean thinks, if he were a monster, she'd be just the unHappy Meal he was looking for. (Part 1 of 'Flannel and Angora'.)


Dean has never been a particularly patient man. The Winchester brothers keep moving because it's how they were raised, because it's how their dad does it—did it—and because it's in the job description. Dean keeps moving because he's never been any good at standing still. Why wait for something to happen when you could be out there looking? Sammy might have tried the quiet life, might have holed up in Stanford for nigh on four years without so much as a flicker, but Dean's fingers itch for the steering wheel when two days pass together without sight or sound of something nasty. Just because he can't see it right this minute doesn't mean it isn't out there.

They've been in some dead-end town just outside of Boston for three days now, and he's starting to think the damn vamps have moved on already. Sam, unfortunately, is convinced otherwise, which is why he finds himself drinking overpriced beer in a seedy bar where the music's too loud and the clientele're too drunk when he should be behind the wheel of the Impala listening to AC/DC with the windows rolled down.

"Would you take that look off your face and scope out the bar?" his brother mutters. "I can't get a clear line of sight; it's too crowded in here."

"If we're gonna be in here much longer I'll need something stronger anyhow." He pushes his stool back, drains the last of his beer. "You cover the exits."

Getting served takes far longer than it should—frankly, this was a ridiculous idea, even if there are vampires hunting here they haven't a hope in hell of spotting them, the place is heaving—but while he's waiting he eyes those closest to him, just in case. Plenty of unpleasant individuals, but none looking potentially undead. Several missing teeth, tan lines; dead giveaways. No one's jumping out at him.

He rests an elbow on the bar, and immediately regrets it. One of the bartenders sets a whisky and what looks like a Pina Colada down next to a couple of shots, just as the beard and the middle-aged woman in the Red Sox shirt to his right depart. The girl ordering the drinks is pretty enough—not strikingly so, nothing special—but what really holds his attention is the fact that she downs the shots one after the other without so much as flinching. Drinking with a purpose. She's not a vamp, though she's pale enough to be; there's nothing predatory about her, and the fact that she hasn't so much as glanced in his direction shows just how little attention she's paying to her surroundings. Emphatically _not_ on the prowl. Then there's the outfit. The leggings are skin-tight, and from what he can see they're good legs, but over the top she's wearing some sort of shapeless pink sweater seemingly selected for its amazing form-disguising properties, and the hiking boots are entirely practical—not a heel in sight. Her hair is in a non-descript ponytail, and if she's wearing any makeup he can't see it. This is not a girl looking to have all eyes on her. This is not a girl looking to have _any_ eyes on her.

As he watches, she takes a glass in each hand, but rather than head for a table or a booth, she melts back into the crowd, only to re-emerge by one of the pillars on the far side of the room. She could be waiting for someone, except that as he watches she finishes the whisky and moves straight on to the cocktail.

And Dean thinks, if he were a monster, she'd be just the unHappy Meal he was looking for.

XXX

Someone's following her. Molly knows someone's following her, even though she's had enough to drink that the world is pleasantly fuzzy, because somewhere along the line all that talk of conspiracies and agonising over minute details taught her an awareness of her surroundings that she'd lacked before she met Sherlock Holmes. She remembers walking home as an undergrad, alone through the city at three in the morning in painfully high heels, and through an ex–council estate in sub-zero temperatures in a scrap of a dress, and it's like nothing has changed. Here she is in a ramshackle little town, a continent away from everything and everyone she knows, quite alone in the world in a way that she's never been before, and she's … staggering home drunk from a bar. The only difference is that 'home' in this case is a terrible hotel.

The thought is enough to make her laugh. Or cry. One of the two.

And now there's someone following her. Every now and again she catches the sound of muffled footsteps, though she's determined not to look back, and she can't quite decide whether to continue on to the hotel—it's not exactly safe-house material—or to turn back for the bar. And she's drunk enough that fear seems less likely to take hold of her than hysteria manifesting as a fit of giggles.

Abruptly, Molly is _tired_. She has always hated being chased, and in this instant she'd rather confront this nameless, faceless threat head on than spend the rest of the night wondering when he's going to make an appearance.

So she stops walking. She stops walking and she says, as clearly as she can, "If you're looking to get a girl's attention, chocolates never go amiss."

Several minutes pass in silence, before it becomes clear that the deserted street is all the response she can hope to receive. _Paranoid_, she thinks. Paranoid, and alone, and hopeless—no wonder Mycroft was reluctant to let her go, she's a mess, she used to be so much better than this, it's like she's regressed, what _happened_ to her? Sherlock Holmes happened to her. And he is not the sort of thing a person ever really recovers from.

It's as she turns to continue on her way that he appears, in an instant, looming over her with his head cocked and a slow smile curving his lips. And she jumps, she can't help it, because for him to get that close to her without her realising it he must have moved _unnaturally_ fast. Her heart is beating a mile a minute, but she was right about the hysteria at least because when she opens her mouth to scream it comes out as laughter. There's a strange man invading her personal space on a deserted street, a frown crossing his face because she's out and out laughing at him, rather than doing the smart thing and—I don't know—_making a break for it_.

"Thank fuck," she says, when she can get the words out; "I thought I was going mad."

XXX

It's a close call. When they round the corner, the first thing they see is the girl scrambling to her feet, clapping a grit-ingrained palm to her neck in a vain attempt to stem the flow of blood, while a vaguely _hacked-off _vampire brushes debris from the sleeve of his shirt. Sam dive tackles him before he can reclaim his victim, but with all six and a half feet of his brother entangled with the creature, Dean can't get a clear shot in with the crossbow.

Fortunately/unfortunately, the vamp manages to throw him—no mean feat, since Sam has a foot on him at least—and turns to Dean with a snarl that evolves smoothly into a howl of rage when the bolt pierces his shoulder. The creature leaps, catlike, toward him, and the force of it is enough to drive him back against the wall; his head slams against the brickwork, but he's alert enough to realise that they're not going to be able to hold this vampire long enough for the dead man's blood to take effect.

Apparently, Sam is of the same opinion, because while Dean is busy fighting for oxygen his brother seizes the opportunity to take the creature's head off with a machete. For several long moments after the body drops to the floor there's silence: Sam panting like he's run a marathon, Dean gasping for air, and the girl staring at the remains of her attacker, one hand still clamped against her neck.

"You good?" Sam asks.

"Fine," Dean says, slightly hoarsely. He presses tentative fingers to the back of his head, and they come away clean. "Check on the girl." She doesn't seem to be having any particularly strong reactions to recent events, which suggests she's going into shock, and Sammy's always been better at the whole sensitivity routine.

"Hey," his brother says, gently. "Are you all right?"

"Thought it might have been him." She says it quietly, her eyes still fixed on the corpse.

"What?"

"The way you were watching me in the bar," she says, and looks up for the first time—not at Sam, but at _Dean_. "I thought it might have been you following me." He ignores the reproving look Sam gives him, because of all the reactions to a first monster-sighting, this is by far the weirdest he's ever come across. "Turns out you just decapitate bitey would-be rapists in your free time. Which is, you know." _An acceptable lifestyle choice?_ "Just couldn't have called it."

She's British, by the sound of it, though it's hard to tell because her words are slightly slurred, from alcohol or blood loss or some combination of the two. While she sounds slightly bemused by the turn that the night seems to have taken, it's nowhere near the panic or anger or tears he'd have expected.

"I'm Sam, and leery over there's my brother Dean. Can you tell me your name?"

"Sam," she says, ignoring the question, "tell me that wasn't what I think it was."

"It, er, wasn't what you think it was."

"You're a terrible liar," she tells him, and frankly Dean has to agree—for a guy with so much practice at the whole fraud thing, his brother is failing miserably when faced with a pair of pretty brown eyes. "Really."

"Sorry," Sam says. "You think I can look at your neck?"

It's hard to see in the dimly lit street, but when Dean moves closer he realises there's blood coating her hand, trickling down her arm, even a dark patch on her sweater; she's lost more than he thinks she knows. When she lifts her hand, he can see the torn flesh on her neck.

"Sammy, we need to get her to a hospital."

In a flash, her hand is back. "No hospitals," she says. "I'll be fine. I just need to get home." Sam reaches for her in alarm as she takes a step and her legs seem to give way.

"Sweetheart, if you don't get yourself stitched up you're gonna bleed out where you stand."

"_No hospitals_." Her tone is firm, but the fact that he strongly suspects Sam is all that's keeping her upright rather spoils the effect.

"We could take her back to the motel?" Sam suggests. "Stitch her up, take her home. Figure out our next move on the way."

"Fine," Dean agrees. "Whatta we do with Marie Antoinette?"

"'Marie Antoinette'?"

"What? I know history."

"Pretty sure historians would disagree."

"She _did_ get her head cut off," the girl agrees.

"See?" Dean lifts the appendage in question by the hair and brandishes it emphatically in Sam's direction. "My reference is sound."

"Whatever," Sam says, evidently unable to refute Dean's logic. Watertight as it is. "You burn the remains, and meet us at the motel when you're done."

"Great. You take the girl; I'll get the severed head. Pretty clear who got the raw end of this deal."

XXX

Nothing that has happened in Molly's life so far is sufficient to prepare her for the moment that she takes a monster's head off with a machete. Not the degree, the doctorate, the three different specialities she'd attempted before settling on Pathology—the fact that she has an IQ of 156. Not the three dates with a manipulative psychopath, or those hours spent in the shooting gallery with D.I. Lestrade because she'd promised herself she'd never be helpless again.

That's why she does it, of course. Because that moment in the street when the vampire had her pinned to the ground and sank a mouthful of razor-sharp teeth into her neck and her head was spinning from the pain and the alcohol—that was her low point. She'd thought the wedding was rock bottom, but in truth she'd still had further to fall.

And Sam and Dean Winchester saved her. They pulled her back, when it seemed at last Sherlock Holmes would take her with him, and now once again she's determined to start over. Once again she promises herself that this is the last time she'll be helpless—to save herself, to save _anyone_.

That's why she offers herself as bait, why she puts herself right back in the line of fire; despite Dean's obvious scepticism, she's determined to do this. She won't be a victim, this time. She'll fight back.

That's why, when Sam goes down under the combined weight and teeth of three vampires, rather than taking the path the hunters have cleared for her, rather than running for the door the moment the monsters are distracted, as Dean instructed, she clobbers one of them round the head with a two-by-four. Unsurprisingly, this has little effect other than to piss the creature off sufficiently that he abandons Sam in favour of pursuing her—perhaps being _just that irritating_ is her super power, it certainly seems to be becoming a habit—and she realises that for a fairly clever person she's not really demonstrating any aptitude for _thinking things through_.

It doesn't really demonstrate a great deal of skill, in the end—she lunges for the machete that Sam lost in the course of his struggle and swings it wildly in the direction of the leaping vampire.

The first swipe takes his arm off just above the elbow. He has just enough time to look genuinely surprised before her second, more accurate blow adds his head to the list of severed body parts.

And it's revolting. It really is. These vampires don't turn helpfully to dust when they're slain, like they did on _Buffy_, which means that once again her cardigan is soaked in blood. (Then again, it's not hers this time, so why not call it a plus?)

Sure, it's revolting. But it's also weirdly exhilarating. For the first time in a really _long_ time she doesn't feel like the world is spinning wildly out of control—she feels like she has some say in what happens next. It's strange, the way the act seems to lift the fog over her mind; it's like she can see clearly again.

She shoves the dismembered corpse aside and struggles to her feet; hefts the two-by-four in one hand, and the machete in the other.

XXX

"So," Molly says, in the subsequent silence, "you two do this for a living, then? Saving people? Hunting things?"

"The family business," Sam agrees.

"Not exactly a business if you don't get paid for it," Dean says, darkly. Apparently getting the job done hasn't improved his mood. "And _you_—the hell happened to getting out of the firing line?"

"He means 'thank you'."

"No, I don't."

"Well, I do," Sam tells her, with an apologetic smile. "Appreciate the support back there."

She'd like to say something witty and clever, but unfortunately Sam is one of those unspeakably beautiful people of whom she has always been mildly terrified, and so what she actually says is, "That'll put marzipan in your pie plate, Bingo."

Because it's not enough that she respond with an obscure TV reference; it should also be one that makes no discernible sense. Sam is still smiling at her, though now with slight bemusement, and she tries her best to look like someone with a firm grasp of the English language. It's a familiar struggle.

"Speaking of pie." Dean claps his brother on the back. "If you're done sweet-talking the girl, Sammy, let's hurry up and torch the place. I'm starving."

XXX

Molly Hooper sits in a diner just outside of Boston, drowning in a borrowed plaid shirt, and quietly mourns the loss of her pink cardigan.


End file.
